My friend asked me to help find old bed sheets for her child’s birth. She was in labor. We gathered water and candles. We went to the dark hospital to help her deliver her baby.

The Russians had cut off all natural gas and electricity to Georgia. A very cold winter was starting.  Many people died and old people were especially helpless.

Because we had no hope in Georgia, my brothers left the country to try to provide for their families. I went into the forest to find wood to burn. My mother and I made the fire on the third floor under the stairs inside an eight story building. The people of the building gathered with us for warmth and food.

We lived in the darkness. We stood in long lines for water. Every day I would walk 7 kilometers to my godmother’s house for any flour or sugar she could spare on that day. Then I would walk 8 kilometers each way to University to study. The auditorium was freezing. Sometimes the professors would invite us to their houses and give us weak tea to share while we learned.

This is not so long ago as you may think. This is not a made up story. This is my true life. This was 1991 in Georgia. You may know Georgia from the story of Jason and the Argonauts. King Aaetes and Princess Medea (where “medicine” comes from) were leaders of the Georgian Kingdom of Colchis. You see Georgia in the news now and may not even realize this is the same land.

My name is Mzia (Muh-zee-uh). I live in America and my husband is from Texas. Our daughter is four years old and our son is three. I am on my way to becoming a United States citizen and I am very happy about this. I am from Georgia and grew up in the Soviet Union under Russian domination.

My mother was a teacher and my father was a renowned scientist in the Soviet Union. His travels included Hungary, Germany and Italy, where he learned about different systems of government.  This was monitored by KGB.

In a Soviet country, you are expected to be certain things. We were expected to be communists, and atheists. Georgian people adopted Christianity as the official state religion in the 4^th Century A.D. We had to fear being discovered as religious people under the Russians. But we kept our trust in God. 

I can remember being sick in bed once as a child. My mother had a cross hanging in the bedroom. People wouldn’t see it in the private room but on this day my father’s colleagues came to the house for supper. One of the guests wanted to see me and wish me good health. He saw the cross with Jesus and became very angry! The next day this was the important subject at my father’s place of work. I remember after that day my mother no longer kept the cross on the wall. From then on, my mother kept it inside of a chest of drawers and inside of our hearts.

Another difficulty for my father was the Communist Party. My father refused to join them. I remember he would say the Soviet economy can not last long. My father died when I was thirteen because of incorrect medical prescriptions. He was never to see his prediction come true.

My grandfather had been a hard working agriculturist. He was a target of the Red Army in 1921 when they first conquered our beloved Georgia. Georgia had a long history of independence – frequently interrupted - for more than 2000 years. It has one of the world’s oldest living written and spoken languages. Archeologists discovered ancient cave cities in Georgia with depressions and storage hollows for fermentation purposes. It is believed by many scientists that wine was invented in Georgia. The Georgian word for wine is “ghvino,” and many think the basis of “vino.”

My brother, Malkhaz, is a successful artist. When he attended art college he would sometimes steal away to attend an Orthodox Church service. Other students and the KGB would stage interventions to teach him the folly of going to church. They would preach to him that when he turned to this fake God, he was turning against the true gods of communism, Lenin and Stalin.

The Russians forced a culture of neighbor spying on neighbor. They held extreme distrust of anyone who was not a member of the communist party.  They tried to enforce that Russian be the only language. They wanted to destroy the Georgian culture.  They erased and ruined ancient treasures of religious art. Language, culture, and religion are basic rights, but to the Russians these are ways to freedom.  Therefore, they could not remain.

The Russians see freedom as a kind of danger. They believe this threat to the government can not be tolerated.  Before the Russians, Georgia was conquered by other powers: Mongolia, Persia, the Byzantine Empire. We have always fought hard to keep our language and our culture.

The Russians were asked to help us defend against the Persians in the early 19^th century and forgot to leave until early last century. Then they left only until 1921 when they forced us to be part of Soviet Union.

I finished school in 1988 and the Soviet Union started to collapse. This was an incredible time! In my young mind a whole new world started to open! The Nationalist Democratic movement leaders taught us that Georgia could regain the independence the Red Army stole away in 1921. We had hope.

I remember my elders were fearful. But my younger generation dreamed of being a free democratic nation in the 20^th Century.

On April 8^th 1989 I was asked with school friends to go to the television studio in Tbilisi for an interview about education. As soon as we arrived we had to leave through an emergency exit. The station was blocked by Russian tanks. I can never forget what this was like.

The next day thousands of peaceful demonstrators gathered with prayer books and candles. They went to the main Government building to defend the constitutional right of the republics to sovereignty. Russia wanted to remove this right. We had no separate government but it was important to us to keep our separate identity. At 3:00AM Russian tanks and soldiers cleared Rustaveli Street. They used shovels and poison gas. Sixteen people, mostly women, were killed. Even a young school girl was slain. Hundreds were injured in a stampede and poisoned by the gas. I remember the fear of the gas there in the days after. Russia made it clear that we had no right to express discontent. It was very sad. We knew our women were killed by the Red Army. This is after Georgian men, our protectors, were forced to fight and die for Russia’s horrible war of conquest against Afghanistan. Russia controlled the radio, television and newspapers. But we knew what happened.

I saw people throw the Soviet flag and stepping on them as a way to protest the Russian tanks surrounding my eight story “Khrushchev” apartment building. We wanted an end to communism in Georgia. We wanted a new, free, humane, democratic country. We saw this as the beginning. We elected President Zviad Gamsakhurdia with 85% of the vote. He died very mysteriously. Many believe the Russians assassinated him.

In 1991 Georgia declared independence. The Russians left, but for a very big price.  Nobody that leaves Russian control is ever forgiven for thinking that they can aspire to anything better. Right away Russia gave arms to minority separatist groups in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These groups were promised the land once the Georgians were driven away and ruined. A civil war began.  The Georgians had no real army. And we were destroyed by the separatists in the provinces. 

On August 14th in 1992 when Russians provoked the war inside Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze sent a message to the democratic world asking for help to Georgians to keep their sovereignty and end the war started by Russians using separatist leaders in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but nobody got involved, nobody showed interest in that matter.  So Russia became the only player in Caucasus region.

I remember very clearly that the separatists were burning Georgian books from schools and churches. I remember many Georgian refugees that had no food or shelter.  We watched hundreds of thousands of the ethnic Georgian majority displaced and many thousands killed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We watched mothers and children killed and bodies mutilated. 

The Russians forced Georgia to accept Russian ‘peacekeepers.’ The Georgians were never allowed to come back. The Russians gave the separatists that helped them passports. They made the Ruble the only currency in the separatist area, but they still pretend to be neutral. To my mind it is important to see how Russia and its supporters ignore Georgia’s will - then and now.  Georgia’s history and Georgia’s rights are treated today the way they were treated then, as if they did not matter.

We rejected communism. Therefore, Russia rejected us. They denied Georgia any food, fuel, medicine when the Soviet Union fell, and they controlled all of this. They stole everything they could when they left. What they could not take, they destroyed.

 Many believe the Russians came back to Georgia now because they never forgot. They never forgave us for embracing democracy, they wanted us to pay.  Really, it is a celebration that Georgia survived at all. For almost seventy years we suffered under communist brutality. Georgians were not allowed to thrive under the Russians. We worked hard as a nation to relearn how to think and how to live free.

And now today all we have done is being taken, again.

 Part Two:  Russia's Manipulation of the Caucuses and History

I am grateful to share my experiences with you. I am also grateful to discuss the history and the present humanitarian crisis in Georgia. 

The Georgians, Ossetians, and Abkhazians have lived in relative peace thousands of years, since before King David the Builder.  The bad times have come in recent years when Russian agitators have manipulated regional politics to keep us divided.  It is hard to find history books with these truths because the Russians banned and destroyed them. Georgian texts, art, and culture were their targets. It is a miracle that some texts survived. They prove the Russian history books wrong. The friendship of our peoples is such that our King Bagrat III, who united Georgia in the 10^th century, is buried in the Bedia Monastery in Abkhazia. 

In fact, Georgian history and the histories of Abkhazia and “South Ossetia” (a name bestowed by the Russians in Soviet times) cannot be viewed separately.  South Ossetia has been politically associated with Georgia since before the 8^th century A.D. when it was known only by its Georgian name, Samachablo. 

Every summer my family used to visit Sukhumi, a major city in Abkhazia, and one of the most beautiful areas in Georgia prior to the problems Russia has created. Almost all Georgian families that did not live there vacationed there.  Relations were intermingled and always very pleasant.

The Russians knew that by denying Georgia its history through a policy of forced Balkanization, our sense of identity would be harmed. Culture, language, history, religion, and unity are parts of freedom. The Russians understand this.  They are experts at destroying freedom, and to destroy freedom you first have to understand it.

We saw the Russian invasion coming over the last year.  If you lived in the area, it was hard not to.  Misha Saakashvili, our president and the national symbol of our desire to turn towards the West and democracy, screamed until he was tired about the Russian plans to attack Georgia, but the rest of Europe only got tired of listening to him. 

In the months prior to this, the Russian sent their jets into Georgian air space numerous times.  There was a bomb dropped on one of our border villages but we were very lucky that it did not explode.  The Russians destroyed a Georgian UAV but blamed it on a mythical “Abkhazian air force” until they were embarrassed by a UAV’s video tape of the Russian jet shooting it down.

There were weeks of shelling and sniping fire that killed Georgian soldiers, policemen, and villagers leading up to this.  In the weeks of the shelling, Russia released reports of thousands of ‘volunteers’ moving into South Ossetia.  We know these ‘volunteers’ were Russian soldiers and paramilitaries out of uniform. 

Misha finally decided that we could not tolerate this killing anymore. He moved the Georgian army in to stop it. Of course, he fell right into the trap of thousands of Russian soldiers and armor waiting for us.  They were amassed on the other side of a 10,000 elevation border crossing.  It is not easy to get so many soldiers, tanks, and armored vehicles to such a remote place.  Now we look back and see the shellings were Putin’s planning.  He was hoping for an excuse to invade. Misha’s attempt to stop the killings gave it to him.

We know the Russians moved the fight out of South Ossetia and bombed all of our air bases and other military bases immediately following Georgia’s move into South Ossetia.  Without an air force, our military was pretty helpless and the Russians quickly took over the country.  I could tell many humanitarian tragedies, but probably if you are reading this you are well aware of the killings and robberies.

But what you may not know is the beauty Russia destroys. Everything that is beautiful in Georgia is a target. They have dropped incendiary bombs to start fires in beautiful Borjomi national park.  United Nations and other aid convoys have been robbed of their food. Entire cities have been plundered and left to rot.  The Russians have even been caught on video robbing a Georgian bank.

Every day I talk to my mother, brothers, and friends to try to figure some way to get them away from this evil and madness.  My mother wonders why she lived to see this and my older brother, a mild-tempered artist in his mid 50’s, is trying to join the army so he can help resist the Russians when and if they invade Tbilisi.  My uncle died recently in a car wreck and I am beginning to think it was a blessing so he did not have to live to see his country destroyed. The US Embassy has refused to issue them visas and I don’t know what I can do.  I feel so helpless and even guilty that I am not suffering with my people, guilty that I am safe at home in a free America.

Georgians are a passionate and deeply patriotic people. This has shaken our souls.  We only want out homeland, Georgia, to have what is right. We only want to live in peace.  Our biggest fear is that this is 1921 all over again. 

I want to write a bit about what America means to Georgia.  Even during the cold war, we looked up to America. America will always be the shining example of liberty and freedom to the world.  It was what we aspired to be. Many Georgian people have left Georgia to work abroad, and they bring back Western knowledge, values, and techniques to Georgia.  This has helped the entire country to modernize. It has helped the country to understand freedom. Thoughts of America help Georgia get past the very narrow master/slave dynamic that is your life when you live beside Russia.

Georgians were especially grateful towards the American people as they helped Georgia build up a national Army after the cold war.  The GTEP and SSOP programs even lead me to meet my husband.  Every division that graduated held a ceremony in Freedom Square in Tbilisi. The nation praised its graduates and thanked the American soldiers also attending the graduation.

Georgia was proud to send soldiers to Iraq to join with American military. We wanted to give something back to the country that had invested so much in us.

Our advances toward freedom have been destroyed. But we are determined to get them back.  The whole country fears that everything we have achieved since our independence has been erased.  Though Georgians are tolerant people as humans, for us it is important to keep our language, religion, and country.  We only want to keep and protect what is ours, never to take from anyone, never to give up no matter what cost we have to pay. Russia does not understand this. America understands this.

Russians have changed their economic system, but not their form of government.  The KGB mentality still rules.   They are experts in changing history. They have nuclear power to use as a threat to the whole civilized world. They are dividing our country to conquer us. This is an old imperialist Soviet Russian idea: divide and rule. We are witnessing it in 21^st century.

Russians are trying to make it look as if they are in the right and only trying to protect Russian citizens.  But this is based on a series of lies to the world. 

I will use my husband’s words from another article to explain the history : “Russia militarily supported the expulsion of the majority ethnic Georgian population from both Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990’s and granted the remaining residents of both provinces Russian citizenship by fiat years later though there was no legal nexus for the granting of this status.  Claiming that the newly-minted Russian citizen’s support of independence or annexation under the principle of self-determination justifies either makes a mockery of the concept of self-determination and indicates that the best way for a country to attack inconvenient sovereignty is to launch pogroms against those ethnicities considered undesirable and offer citizenship and eventual independence as motivational spoils to the victors.”

Now we are waiting. We wait to see if the Russians are really going to leave, we wait to see how long they will maintain these “checkpoints” in our country.  We wait to see if they will come back to finish Saakashvili and Georgian independence if we are not torn apart by political repercussions from this war.  We wait to see if we can rebuild what we have tried so very hard to accomplish. We wait to see if our friends will be able to stay by our side now that Russia has made the region a political nightmare and threats of wider conflict.

We are encouraged by the actions of our friends thus far.  Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Ukraine stand by our side. These States know Russia best and have the most to lose in the future. They sent their presidents to Tbilisi during this war. This must have made Putin very angry.   It was brave of them.  President George Bush, President Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, John McCain, and many others are with us.  Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Bashar Al-Asad, Mouammar Kadhafi, and others like that support Russia’s actions against us.  We think that Putin should be judged by the company he keeps.  It is a good sign that we are on the right side of this war.  

We are afraid, but the Russians will not make us return to the days when they ruled by fear.  Georgia has tasted freedom, and progress, and we are willing to risk everything to keep it.